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Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Weathervane Wednesday ~ An Ordinary Eagle on an Extraordinary Building


This is part of an on-going series of photographs of weather vanes in the Nutfield, New Hampshire area (formerly Derry, Londonderry and parts of Hudson, Windham and Manchester).  Some of the weather vanes are historical, some are whimsical, and all are interesting.

Do you know the location of weather vane #65?   Scroll down to the bottom to see the answer!





A flying eagle weather vane sits atop the large cupola on this unusual home in Windham, New Hampshire.  The home is a former carriage house, part of the estate of A. Everett “Chick” Austin, who built the Windham Playhouse in 1946 from an old barn built in the 1830s.   His estate lodged upcoming young actors like Rod Steiger, Jack Carter and Jason Robards.  Chick Austin was the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut and the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida.  In 1957 he had donated land which bordered his estate to expand the cemetery the Cemetery on the Hill, where he is buried.

If you like this unusual looking house, it is currently up for sale.  It's located on Range Road.

Images of America: Windham, by Bradford R. Dinsmore,  Arcadia Publishing, 2003 (chapter 9, starting on page 119, is all about the Windham Playhouse and Chick Austin)

A biography of Arthur Everett Austin-   Magician of the Modern, by Eugene Gaddis, Knopf Publishing, 2000

Official Town Website, Windham, NH, “A Closer Look… Windham’s Public Cemeteries” http://www.windhamnewhampshire.com/updated/pdfs/CemeteryHistory.pdf



Click here to see the entire collection of Weathervane Wednesday posts!


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Copyright 2012, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

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